The news in brief
In a randomised trial of 112 young adults (Baylor University), being ghosted after two hours of message exchanges changed neither sleep measured by a smart ring nor self-reported sleep, compared with a polite ending or no message at all. The authors stress that this only applies to a very recent, low-commitment contact.
What the study says
Michael Langlais and his team at Baylor University (Texas) published a randomised controlled trial in Frontiers in Psychology on 27 January 2026, on a simple question: does being ghosted, that is, seeing a conversation break off without explanation, damage your sleep?
How the experiment was run
The participants, 112 undergraduates included in the analysis, believed they were signing up for a matchmaking service (Langlais et al., 2026). After a first session in which they chose photos of potential partners, they were randomly assigned to three groups at the end of the second session: 40 in the ghosting group, 35 in the "courteous ending" group and 37 in the control group (Langlais et al., 2026).
The ghosting group exchanged text messages for two hours with a research assistant, who then suddenly stopped replying. The "courteous ending" group received a polite goodbye message after those two hours. The control group received no message. The exchanges took place between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Sleep was measured in two ways. On one side, a smart ring worn continuously recorded sleep duration, efficiency, time to fall asleep, night-time awakenings, night-time heart rate and its variability, without participants seeing their data. On the other, a sleep diary filled in on the morning of the second and third days collected duration, time to fall asleep, awakenings and perceived quality, rated from 1 to 5 (Langlais et al., 2026).
What they found
The main result is an absence of effect. The authors write that they observed no influence of experimental ghosting on sleep measures, objective or subjective, and all the effects measured are small (differences below 0.20 in Cohen's d, partial eta squared below 0.02) (Langlais et al., 2026).
Perceived sleep quality illustrates this lack of difference well. On the second day it was 3.35 out of 5 in the ghosting group, 3.76 in the "courteous ending" group and 3.61 in the control group. On the third day it was 3.70, 3.74 and 3.81, with no significant gap (Langlais et al., 2026).
Only one result stood out: night-time heart rate. It was slightly higher in the control group than in the "courteous ending" group (66.37 versus 62.00 beats per minute on the second day, 67.17 versus 61.51 on the third), while the ghosting group (61.72 and 62.90) did not differ from any other (Langlais et al., 2026). The authors consider this difference probably due to chance.
Why this result differs from the earlier study
The same team had observed in 2024 a rise in heart rate and blood pressure at the moment the ghosting happened. The authors put forward several explanations for the gap: this time the measurements covered sleep on the following nights rather than the moment itself, the exchange took place through a different channel, there was no face-to-face meeting, and the relationship remained ambiguous. These are hypotheses, not tested here (Langlais et al., 2026).
The limits to keep in mind
The authors themselves point out several limits (Langlais et al., 2026). The sample comes from a single university and is mostly women and white participants. The analysis was calibrated to detect a medium effect: a smaller effect could have gone unnoticed. The researchers did not check how participants had perceived the ghosting, or what they had written to each other. The conversation, limited to two hours for ethical reasons, does not resemble an attachment of several weeks.
A critical reading adds that the absence of a significant difference is not proof of the absence of an effect: no equivalence test was run, which the authors acknowledge.
What this changes for the reader
For anyone ghosted after a few messages or a first exchange, this study offers a useful counterpoint: the knock to your morale is real, but it does not necessarily come with ruined nights. It says nothing about a relationship of several months, where silence weighs far more.
Nor does it say that ghosting is harmless for the person on the receiving end: other work describes a loss of control and lower self-esteem, and a 2026 study shows that the one who leaves often feels worse than we imagine. It suggests rather that the effects of a very early silence are more modest than feared, which can help you avoid turning it into a verdict on your own worth.
Going further
This news item is part of a broader topic, which our page Ghosting: disappearing without a word covers in detail.